Understanding the Sicilian language identities through “implicit” and “explicit” bilingual inscription. A novel approach.

This paper introduces the concepts of "implicit" and "explicit" bilingualism to better understand the complex linguistic landscape of Sicily in antiquity. Situated at the center of the Mediterranean, the island has historically been a major crossroads of culture and has been characterized by bi- and multilingualism since the Classical period, when both Indo-European (Oscan, Elymian, Sikel, and Greek) and non-Indo-European (Punic and so-called “Sicanian”) languages were spoken (Tribulato 2012). However, indigenous languages of Sicily disappeared from written records by the end of the 5^thc. BCE, and Punic after the 1^st c. CE (Amadasi Guzzo 2012). On the other hand, the Roman conquest of the island (241 BCE) introduced yet another language, Latin, which spread quickly throughout Sicily, and resulted in a situation of competition and bilingualism with Greek until the 6^th c. CE. Understanding when, where, and by which communities these languages were spoken is also complicated by the fact that some varieties (e.g., Punic) might have been spoken longer than they are attested, and others (e.g., Hebrew), though attested on inscriptions, might have had little to no diffusion as spoken languages on the island, but were used in inscriptions because of their cultural importance for individual communities. Finally, ancient sources (e.g., among others, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, and Plautus) give us different accounts on the presence of languages in Ancient Sicily, sometimes not coherent with the epigraphic material.

To untangle this complex scenario, I will make use of two types of evidence 1) Greek-Latin, Latin-Punic, Greek-Punic, and Hebrew-Latin bilingual inscriptions, where two languages appear concurrently, which I call “explicit bilingual” monuments, and 2) a corpus of Greek monolingual inscriptions exhibiting traces of contact (both on a linguistic and on a graphic level) with indigenous languages (Elymian, Sikel), Oscan, Punic, Hebrew, or Latin, what I term “implicit bilingual” monuments. Building on the work of other scholars (e.g. (Adams, Janse & Swine 2002; Mullen & James 2012; Corbier 2012; Poccetti 2014), I will demonstrate how the combination of these two textual typologies is fundamental to understanding the sociolinguistic perception and the everyday diffusion of languages in Postclassical Sicily

I argue the deliberate choice of inscribing two languages on a stone displays the ideal relationship that the two languages were perceived to have in Sicily, while the presence of language and cultural contact in Greek implicitly bilingual inscription can give us a better impression how the Sicilian linguistic landscape actually looked like in the postclassical period. For instance, this analysis shows how Punic, visible in Greek inscriptions from Palermo in phenomena of language interference, survived longer than its explicit attestation in Punic inscriptions (ISic000470=CIL X 17296). Moreover, it is clear that Greek is highly affected by contact with Latin in implicitly bilingual inscription, while explicit Greek-Latin bilingual funerary inscriptions often represent two symmetrical texts in perfectly comparable languages (e.g., ISic000348=IMCatania 74), or a Greek poetic text to accompany a prosaic text in Latin (ISic002753). "Ultimately, this paper will show the complex relations between local identities, self-representation, and cultural contact in Postclassical Sicily.